What Does it Mean to live Above the Frost Line? This photo, taken by Lynn Hamilton Rutherford, Gives you the Answer.

THANKSGIVING DAY FROM ABOVE THE FROST LINE

Hello Family and Dear Ones. Happy Thanksgiving Day from Cherry Mountain. It is a lovely time of year with mild weather, loved ones at the table, and some flowers still blooming in the garden. The Rhododendron is confused, blooming, so I cut a bouquet and put it in a vase. I did not have to buy flowers for the table this year.

November Days in the Southern Appalachian Mountains

I'll Meet You at the Bear Cave

The Best Christmas Gift - GIVE A BOOK

Please shop locally for Christmas gifts. Books are always appreciated. A book inscribed by the author is especially appreciated.

Now available at Phillips and Lloyd bookstore on the square in Hayesville - Clothes Lines, the anthology with the theme of clothes, with poems, essays, and stories by women who live in or have ties to the Western NC area.

A number of local NCWN West writers and poets have work in this book. Karen Holmes, Carole Thompson, Jo Carolyn Beebe, Peg Russell, Glenda Barrett, Janice Moore, Brenda Kay Ledford, and her mother, Blanche Ledford, have poems, stories and memoir in Clothes Lines, edited by Celia Miles and Nancy Dillingham.

Now available at Phillips and Lloyd bookstore in Hayesville - Now Might as Well Be then, poetry by Glenda Beall

On Saturday, December 5, at 11:00 a.m., Glenda Council Beall, and several authors of Clothes Lines, will be at the shop, Phillips and Lloyd, to meet, greet, and sign copies of their books. Pass this on to your friends who might be interested.

Living Above the Frost Line on November 12, 2009

Red Leaves Across the Blue Ridge Photo taken Nov. 12, 2009 Ourside the bank in Hayesville, North Carolina

Army Ranger Pearson Reid Brantley

In America Veterans Day honors military veterans. It is both a state and a national holiday, usually observed on 11th Day in the 11th Mount to also celebrate Armistice Day and the signing of Armistice with Germany at the ending of World WarI at the 11th hour on the 11th day of the 11th month in 1918.

For me all that I've been able to think of these during recent days is our thirteen fallen dead at Fort Hood this week. Watching the diplay of the "battlefield crosses" on display at the memorial service yesterday hurt my heart. I do not believe I will ever forget that image: the boots, the helment the gun forming a cross situated next to a photo of each man and woman who died in the shooting.

All I've been thinking of, I've said all day, "All I've been able to think of" is my own beloved twenty-five year old grandson Army Ranger, Pearson Reid Branltey who will deploy in the spring.

Today l celebrate Pearson's life and all day I will be celebratng most of all that I know he is alive and well and looking very happy shown here in this recent photo with his sister Amanda and his true love Becky.

The Mole on the Pavement

"The Mole on the Pavement" a poem

by Nancy Simpson

THE MOLE ON THE PAVEMENT

by Nancy Simpson

We thought you loved the dark,

thought you had a good life

in your underground world,

but we learned different

early this morning

finding you frozen,

your thick hands held out.

We had nothing to give you

so we pretended piety

and walked away rationalizing:

He thought he could dig through asphalt.

He forgot mornings are cold here.

He wanted to live on the other side.

Weather Report Above the Frost Line 11-5-09

I checked the predicted low for tonight, and a tear slid down my cheek. 29 degrees they say.

It could be the last night for my flowers, here above the frost line.

So far all fall I woke every morning to bright colored leaves and flowers blooming. I've had many rose bushes, some nashturtiums, a few butterfly bushes, cleome, chrysanthesums and my star for Ocober and November - the Confederate Rose.

Sometimes the freeze stays away until after Thanksgiving. I dread this night - if it is the night of the hard freeze.

Bio - Poet Heather McHugh

Congratulations Heather

Heather McHugh was born in California in 1948 and raised in rural Virginia. She entered Harvard University at the age of 16, where she took a seminar with Robert Lowell and had her first poem published in The New Yorker. “My whole work is to catch the word by surprise, sneaking up on language, sneaking up on the world as it lurks in words,” McHugh said. “I love the recesses of reason. That’s a great place to set my mind at rest.”

Exuding a love of language, wit, and observation, McHugh creates poems that are profoundly intelligent. Through the use of puns, rhymes, and syntactical twists, her work is an ongoing inquiry into the ways language can aid and impede participation in life. “I write because I want to find out what was bothering me . . . I’m not sure what it is that wants to be said, but I’m there to be its scribe,” says McHugh. “Almost always I’ve seen some pattern. Then comes a rocking and a humming. I find language to document that play of patterns in the world.”

In her book The Father of the Predicaments (1999), McHugh takes her cue from Aristotle, who wrote that “the father of the predicaments is being.” The book opens with a long poem about a loved-one dying and the limits of speech: “What did she mean? All I can call upon/is words—unsatisfactory to say/the least—a nomen always aiming/for amen, a pupil meaning/well, pre-emptively.”

McHugh’s honors include two grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Griffin Poetry Prize, and a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship. In 1999 she was elected a Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets. McHugh is Milliman Distinguished Writer-in-Residence at the University of Washington in Seattle. She frequently teaches as Visiting Professor at the Writers' Workshop in Iowa and has held chairs at the University of California at Berkeley, the University of Alabama, and the University of Cincinnati.


Selected Works
Dangers (1977)
A World of Difference (1981)
To the Quick (1987)
Shades (1988)
Hinge & Sign: Poems 1968-1993 (1994)
Broken English: Poetry and Partiality, essays (1993)
The Father of the Predicaments (1999)
Glottal Stop: 101 Poems of Paul Celan, translation with Nikolai Popov (2000)
Cyclops, Euripides, translation (2000)

Poet Heather McHugh Wins Mac Arthur Fellowship

Heather McHugh Wins MacArthur Fellowship

reported by DEBORAH

on OCTOBER 1, 2009

Thanks to the blogpoesy galore for the tip.

Nancy Simpson says: Hello Followers. Heather McHugh was the poetry professor I worked with in the Warren Wilson M.F.A. Writing Program.

Congratulations to Heather McHugh for receiving the $500,000. Mac Arthur Fellowship Award. Read more.

Thanks to the blogpoesy galorefor this news. Blogpoesy

reports:

"I’m delighted to learn that Heather McHugh, published in 32 Poems, won aMacArthur (aka genius grant) fellowship. The poem we published by McHugh is entitled “Ill-Made Almighty” and was republished in Best American Poetry. I’ve been reading her since a mentor during my college years lent her book to me, and it’s a thrill to have published her and to see her win this life-changing award of $500,000."

From the press release:

This past week, the recipients learned by a phone call out of the blue from the Foundation that they will each receive $500,000 in “no strings attached” support over the next five years. MacArthur Fellowships come without stipulations and reporting requirements and offer Fellows unprecedented freedom and opportunity to reflect, create, and explore. The unusual level of independence afforded to Fellows underscores the spirit of freedom intrinsic to creative endeavors. The work of MacArthur Fellows knows neither boundaries nor the constraints of age, place, and endeavor.

NOVEMBER 1, 2009 NO FROST, NO HARD FREEZE HERE ABOVE THE FROST LINE

GLORIOSA DAISY

FULL MOON IN TARUS ON NOVEMBER 2, 2009

Two Poems by Glenda Council Beall, Poet of the Month for October 2009

It has been a pleasure to celebrate the poems of Glend Council Beall this month on this site -

LIVING ABOVE THE FROST LINE.

The big news is that her poetry chapbook NOW MUGHT AS WELL BE THEN has been published. If you have ordered a copy, it will arrive this week.

The sensuous words of Glenda Beall’s poems carry the reader into unforgettable landscapes: the richly textured scenes of the rural south and those of the human spirit with its joys, challenges, and yes, its music.

Janice Townley Moore, author of Teaching the Robins, and winner of the Press 53 Poetry Award for 2009

TWO NEW POEMS BY GLENDA COUNCIL BEALL

Ballet in the Piney Woods

Little girl sunsuits littered the wiregrass.

Summer warmed small bronze bodies

that danced on the stage of a fallen oak,

to songbirds’ music from the mayhaw.

They felt, at five, the kiss of butterflies

upon their eyes, breathed honeysuckle air.

Like sylphs set free they twirled, arms open,

gathering the breeze against their bareness.

Chastised for their boldness by older girls

who barged into their glade,

the innocents saw themselves

and were ashamed.

Lift Your Glass

From the vineyard,

she burst forth

with a hint of blush,

a touch of dew

upon her cheek.

Battered by winds, rain and time,

rooted deep, she toughens

to a satiny sheen.

Finally, crushed by adversity

she emerges, life's

finest nectar.

Drink a toast to woman.

Previously published in Red Owl Magazine, 1999)

Here is more Glenda Counci Beall pubishing information.

Poems:

"Big Sur" - Storyteller magazine 1996

"Snow Dreams" - Georgia Journal, 1998

"Mountain Seagull" - Journal of Kentucky Studies - 1998

"Inundated" - Journal of Kentucky Studies - 1998

"My Father's Horse" - Main Street Rag, 2001

"The Peach Tree" - Appalachian Heritage Summer Issue 2002

"Tomato Man" - Lights in the Mountains

"Scene from Yellowstone's Valiant Wild" - Kakalak, 2009

November Trees - Living with Loss, Winter issue, 2009

Womanhood"- Red Owl Magazine - 1999 (file titled Life Your Glass)

"Drought" - Lucidity, 1999

"Open Window" - Writer's Cramp 1997

"A Photograph of My Brothers and Me" - Journal of Kentucky Studies 2004

"Ballet in the Piney Woods" - Freckles to Wrinkles, Silver Boomer Books anthology

Essays published in:

"Forks in the Road" Anthology by Riemann publishing

"Mother's Reunion" - Reunion Magazine

"An Angel Named Amos" - Cup of Comfort for Horse Lovers

Fiction:

"Confrontation", short story published in Muscadine Lines; A Southern Journal

Glenda Council Beall had a poem accepted for Living With Loss Magazine. "November Trees" will come out in the Winter Issue for 2009.

Poet Nancy Simpson Celebrates the First Anniversary of This Site LIVING ABOVE THE FROST LINE

One year ago, I attended a Saturday How to Blog Workshop sponsored by NC Wrirters Network West. The next day, on Sunday, October 26th, 2008, I made my first post with pictures. I made up my mind early at the workshop that my site would focus on southern and Appalachian writers, that I would aim to celebrate the work of one poet each month and would add good poems when I could get them even if there was already a featured poet. A few times, I resorted to reprinting a few of my own poems, but that is not my goal.

For sure, when the poems are posted, that is when the visitors swarm in from around the world. I check my sitemeter, and although I do not know who my readers are, I know where they are coming from. I know the page they entered on so can make a good guess it is poetry they want. It is exciting to know there are folks in the world who love to read poetry and search for it. Thousands have searched for poems by Physician Poet John Stone, poems by former Georgia Poet Laureate Bettie M. Sellers, poems by Appalachian Poet Ruth Faulkner Grubbs, and others. A young Mississippi poet named Particia Neely Dorsey became a follower, and I featured her poems. This month, the featured poet is Glenda Council Beall, author of the newly published poetry collection NOW MIGHT AS WELL BE THEN. Lots of readers come looking. On one day alone, twelve people searched and found poet Clarence Lee Newton and his poems on my site. People also come looking for colored leaves changing across the Blue Ridge and for flowers growing on the northside of an appalacian mountain. It seems they come looking for anything Appalachian.

If you are a practicing poet or if you are interested in poetry, visit often and leave a comment.

Original welcome: Celebrating One Year Above the Frost Line.

Welcome to my new blog. Living Above the Frost Line is a dwelling place for practicing free verse poets. Above the frost line, we give ourselves some extra growing time. I am still here, still practicing poetry, still studying, publishing, still teaching and still learning how to live. Yes, I know, the hard freeze will come, but until it arrives, I shall grow and share my poems.

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